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Finance & Strategy·10 min read·24 April 2026

The CFO's 50-Question Playbook for Real-Time Tally ERP Intelligence

Every CFO and finance head has questions Tally ERP can answer — but most never ask them because getting the data takes too long. Here are 50 questions you should be asking every week, each traceable back to Tally.

A CFO's job is to turn financial data into strategic decisions. Tally ERP holds all the raw financial data your business generates. The gap between the two — data in Tally, decisions in the boardroom — is the problem QuamIQ was built to close.

Most CFOs settle for 10–15 standard reports because extracting anything more specific from Tally takes too much time, too many manual steps, or a technical resource who is never free when you need them. But the questions that drive the biggest decisions are often exactly the ones that need a custom query.

This playbook gives you 50 questions — organized by financial domain — that every CFO should be asking their Tally data regularly. QuamIQ answers the pre-built ones in under a second and novel ones in about 2.9 seconds, and it shows the SQL behind each so your CA can audit it.

Section 1: Cash Flow & Liquidity (Questions 1–10)

  1. 1.What is our current cash and bank balance across all accounts?
  2. 2.What is our net cash flow for this month vs. last month?
  3. 3.What is our projected cash position if all outstanding receivables are collected?
  4. 4.What is our minimum cash position in the last 30 days?
  5. 5.How much cash have we spent on salaries and wages this month?
  6. 6.What is the average days sales outstanding (DSO) for this quarter?
  7. 7.What is our current quick ratio?
  8. 8.How much of our cash balance is in current accounts vs. fixed deposits?
  9. 9.What is our monthly cash burn rate over the last 6 months?
  10. 10.If our top 3 customers delay payment by 60 days, what is our projected cash shortfall?

Section 2: Receivables Management (Questions 11–20)

  1. 1.Who are the top 10 debtors by outstanding balance today?
  2. 2.What is the total receivables overdue by more than 30 days?
  3. 3.Which customers have exceeded their credit limit this month?
  4. 4.What percentage of our total receivables are overdue by more than 90 days?
  5. 5.Which debtors have had zero payment activity in the last 60 days?
  6. 6.What is the average invoice collection time by customer segment?
  7. 7.What is the total value of disputed invoices currently outstanding?
  8. 8.Which sales region has the highest overdue receivables?
  9. 9.What is the trend in our debtor days over the last 12 months?
  10. 10.What is our bad debt provision as a percentage of total receivables?

Section 3: GST & Tax Compliance (Questions 21–28)

  1. 1.What is our total GST output liability for this month?
  2. 2.What is our input tax credit (ITC) available for set-off this month?
  3. 3.What is the net GST payable for GSTR-3B filing?
  4. 4.Which vendors have not provided valid GST invoices this quarter?
  5. 5.What is our IGST vs. CGST vs. SGST split for this month?
  6. 6.Which product categories have the highest GST outflow?
  7. 7.Are there any invoices above ₹2.5 lakh without e-invoice generation?
  8. 8.What is the trend in our effective GST rate over the last 4 quarters?

Section 4: Profitability & Margins (Questions 29–37)

  1. 1.What is our gross profit margin this month vs. the same month last year?
  2. 2.Which product line has the highest contribution margin?
  3. 3.What is our EBITDA for the current financial year?
  4. 4.Which cost centre is most over budget this quarter?
  5. 5.What is the profitability breakdown by customer segment?
  6. 6.What is our net profit trend over the last 12 months?
  7. 7.Which expense categories have grown faster than revenue this year?
  8. 8.What is our operating leverage — how much does a 10% revenue increase affect profit?
  9. 9.What is our break-even revenue for this month?

Section 5: What-If Scenario Analysis (Questions 38–44)

These are the questions most CFOs can never get answered from standard Tally reports — because they need scenario modelling, not just data extraction:

  1. 1.If receivables over 60 days are written off, what is the exact impact on our P&L and balance sheet?
  2. 2.If we increase selling price by 5% across all products, what is the projected profit impact?
  3. 3.What is our cash flow forecast for the next 90 days based on current collection trends?
  4. 4.If our top 5 customers delay payment by 30 days, what is our liquidity shortfall?
  5. 5.If raw material costs increase by 8%, what is our new break-even point?
  6. 6.What is our projected working capital requirement for next quarter based on current growth rate?
  7. 7.If we reduce DSO from 45 days to 30 days, how much working capital is freed up?

Where enough history exists — around 24 months of data — QuamIQ's forecasting (Holt-Winters and Prophet) can project seasonal trends with three scenarios, conservative, moderate, and optimistic, so a what-if isn't a single guess but a range you can plan against.

Section 6: Inventory & Procurement (Questions 45–50)

  1. 1.What is our current inventory value by product category?
  2. 2.Which stock items have not moved in the last 30 days?
  3. 3.What is our average inventory turnover ratio this quarter?
  4. 4.Which vendors account for more than 20% of our total procurement spend?
  5. 5.What is the variance between purchase orders issued and invoices received this month?
  6. 6.Which product categories have the highest stock holding cost?

Why These 50 Questions Are Almost Never Asked

The usual reason CFOs don't ask these questions regularly is not lack of interest — it is the time and effort of getting the answers out of Tally. A question like "What is our DSO trend over 12 months?" means exporting 12 monthly reports, stitching them together in Excel, and running the calculation by hand. A CFO who needs that once a quarter loses two or three hours to it — so it gets skipped.

With QuamIQ, every question in this playbook is answered in seconds, with the underlying SQL shown and the figure reconciled to the paise against your Tally. A CFO could run through all 50 in a single sitting — with time left over for the follow-ups that each answer sparks.

Multi-Intent Queries: Asking Two Questions at Once

You can also ask compound questions the way you naturally think — QuamIQ separates the intents, runs the queries, and merges the results:

A CFO Intelligence Layer That Adapts to You

As you use QuamIQ, its Correction Memory learns your specific financial vocabulary — the way your team refers to cost centres, the custom ledger names your accountant set up, the metrics you care about most. Correct an answer and QuamIQ remembers; after three corrections on the same pattern, that answer becomes a permanent template returned instantly. Over time it fits the way your business actually talks about its numbers.

"Decisions happen faster when data is one question away — and safer when every answer shows its working." — QuamIQ

Conclusion

The 50 questions in this playbook mark the difference between a CFO who reacts to last month's numbers and one who shapes next month's strategy. Tally ERP has always had the answers. QuamIQ makes them accessible — quickly, in plain English, and with the working attached so every figure is auditable.

Book a demo at demo@quambase.com to see all 50 questions answered live — and reconciled — against your own Tally data.

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